Talk:Candidates for deletion/Archive4

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Thanks Carpetsmoker – this is really refreshing! In the early days (after the import in June 2007), I had to argue for an hour to delete a few comments! I just ask that we keep useful content somewhere, even if simple, or even if it has to be in an ugly comment in a related tip.

A quick check confirms that I agree with everything Fritzophrenic has said so far (particularly where he was agreeing with me!).

Tomorrow I might flag the discussion where we don't have consensus (just a couple of tips) to make it easier to digest. --JohnBeckett 09:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is to keep. While Carpetsmoker is correct, there is no harm in keeping this. I have reworded the tip. I have now tried the tip with a CJK font, and have inserted an image directly into the tip – it looks great! --JohnBeckett 06:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Wow – I just clicked the link in this tip (to see a sample of the output generated by the script). It is breathtaking! I am a total ignoramus in non-English matters so perhaps my opinion doesn't matter, but this tip impresses me. If I knew anything about CJK I would want this tip, so I say keep it! Alternatively, move its content and make it a comment in VimTip51 (the target of the merge). I agree that having a script in the comments looks ugly, but you can't just delete content like this IMHO. --JohnBeckett 09:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we should keep this tip for the coolness factor alone. We should see about uploading the linked image to the wiki and placing it in the tip directly. And, of course, put a "see also" in this tip and in VimTip51 to cross-link each other. On a practical note, I think the output of this function is a little nicer looking than :digraphs, and it is able to be customized to (for example) only output a specific range of characters.
--Fritzophrenic 15:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

IMO this particular list is clumsy, and using one of the many lists on the net is much easier since you can categorize and/or search them
For example, try to find the greek letter "Gamma", or an arrow, in this list, you'll be busy for (at least) 5 minutes.

So just how useful is this list? I think it's pretty impractical and useless, there are much better alternatives.

Perhaps it is a little clumsy, although it is made less so by the fact that it is in Vim and we can use the nice Vim movement and search functions to help. Perhaps using a list online to find a character you need is better. But, what if you're working on a machine without internet access? Or one without a decent web browser? Or maybe, you want to test your vim and/or system configuration to ensure that it can display a certain character set. Maybe you are one of those people who wants to do everything in Vim...you've downloaded patches that let you run a terminal in Vim, you have more plugins than you care to count, you have Vim integrated with every single other application on your computer (including your web browser), and you don't WANT to view the list of characters in an external application. Or, maybe you're just looking for cool ways to impress your friends using a different editor to show them "look what my editor can do!". I think we should keep this tip, which is well-developed, has nice-looking output, and could potentially be useful. We can get rid of the other "display all characters" tip because this one is far superior, but I think we should keep this one. If it makes you feel better, put a big disclaimer at the top that says "There are more useful lists available online" with a link to wikipedia or something, but don't delete this tip!

<This is my opinion that applies to absolutely all tips>
Even if it is clumsy and useless, I see no reason to get rid of it.
Actually, unless a tip is redundant with another one, I don't see any reason to delete it. Often as experienced vim users we don't see the need of a bad practice or a useless tip ; doesn't this mean we should instead explain how to use vim?
</>

Keep. Again, Carpetsmoker is correct. However, I really don't want to delete a tip when we have a contributor here (Dennis) who likes it. This can revisited in a few months. --JohnBeckett 06:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

To be clear: these icons are worth keeping, but I don't think this is the right place for them, I have to go now but I will try and get them on the vim site and VimMac wiki later.

I'd make sure the icons get placed in an appropriate place before deleting. Someone should leave a comment on Dennis's page when this is done so he knows about it. --Fritzophrenic 15:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

If you think the VimMac wiki is a better place for the icons, then what about other tips in the Mac category? When does a tip belong in this wiki and when to the VimMac wiki?
--Dennis Benzinger 19:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, this page doesn't really have anythingto do with MacOS or tips in general, it's just a few (nice) icons, the fact that they happen to be MacOS icons doesn't matter, it's just not very "tip-like" if you know what I mean.

I get a "500 server error" when editing the MacWiki, I also subscribed to the Vim website maillist but need to wait for moderator approval ... I will post back when They're on the site and MacWiki so this tip can be removed.

Note that I did not merge the body of the tip, it is ugly, slow, and even seems to crash Vim at times, v% does almost the same and works better. -- User:Carpetsmoker 12:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. This tip is something entirely different, providing syntax highlighting for matching parentheses. Some people might like to have that, even if it is slow. HOWEVER, much better methods include v% as mentioned, or simply using 'matchparen'. These should be mentioned in the tip and made clear that they may be superior methods. But remember, someone found this tip useful at some point.

It is slow, and it has a bad karma. Yet it answers a concern. No need for deletion. The tip can be fixed, even if it can be summarized by: install rainbow_parenthesis
--Luc Hermitte 00:32, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

The "rainbow_parenthsis" link is dead, is this still active?
I replaced {{merged}} with {{duplicate}}

I've fixed the link to point to web site where rainbow paretnhesis maintenance has been taken over. --Luc Hermitte 00:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I have edited the tip with todo that tip needs clarification, and a suggestion that we might reconsider it for deletion if not fixed by July. I also deleted the comments that I had earlier copied into VimTip6 since I don't want redundant info that we would just have to worry about later. --JohnBeckett 02:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that this tip is kind of silly – Vim's built-in spelling works perfectly fine for me – I know that other people really prefer to use their own spelling program (Ispell, Aspell, etc.) for reasons of their own (they already have an extensive dictionary built up, they prefer the interface, etc.). I think we should keep this tip, but edit it to make it abundantly clear that Vim has built-in spelling support. Perhaps we could keep the deprecated template but remove the delete template.

Indeed, aspell implements one of the finest engine for suggesting alternatives. Which means even if vim provides an on-the-fly spell-checker, and even if there exists 6 (or more) spell checking plugins, I don't see the point in deleting this tip.

May be there is a need for a tip about spell checking in vim that also explain how to use the external spell checkers?
As I don't see any duplicate tag, I suppose there is none.

Ok, keep.
Some other stuff came up which has been taking up most of my time at the moment, but I will go over all "deprecated" spellcheck plugins in a few weeks (if no one else has) and merge/improve as necessary.

Sounds good! I think Copy, cut and paste contains basically the same info and explains it better. And, if someone is using plain 'ol vi, they probably shouldn't expect to find too many tips here that actually work for them. --Fritzophrenic 15:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Haha...totally agree. I read the tip and was amazed...the entire content and comments can be summarized by "you can use something other than 'a' for the name of a mark"...if you're using marks at all, this is a "no crap" kind of tip. --Fritzophrenic 15:04, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

OK. There are exceptions to my "don't delete non-redundant tips" policy.
I always use mx (don't ask why, I don't even know), and I don't see the point in my "x" is better than your "a".
--Luc Hermitte 00:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Carpetsmoker nominated this for deletion, and (at my suggestion) has put the content of this tip on Vim documentation (which is linked from the Main Page). For simplicity, and in anticipation of agreement, I have added this to the "we have agreed to delete" list. Please kick me if there is a problem. --JohnBeckett 11:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I tentatively agree with this deletion. The tip really provides nothing of value. However, the deletion comment, "Do we really want a page for all applications that can be used in conjunction with vim?" is something I would answer, "yes!" But, such tip needs to:

Provide useful instructions detailing HOW to integrate the application with Vim

Tell WHY you'd want to integrate with Vim (and the limitations, etc.)

Have a title that indicates it is a tip about integrating with a specific application

Tip505 just mentions that you can use Vim with pine, I never used pine but most console programs just launch whatever EDITOR is set too ... It's more than obvious that you can set EDITOR to vim in order to use Vim...
For other applications this may not be so easy or obvious, and a tip could be created for those pages...

I'm inclined to disagree - I see this tip, which is very simple and to the point, and then I see Working with Unicode, which I would need to spend quite some time looking through for information I may not need. Granted, as it is the tip isn't THAT useful, but it could easily be made more so. I see the possible use as follows:

Hmm...I know I want the copyright symbol, but what on earth is the key-code for that?

Maybe if I could list all available characters, and echo them to my screen, I could use ga to see what the correct one is (or just yank and put the one I want).

Hmm...I wonder if there's a tip about that...<searches the Vim Tips wiki for "print available characters">

Oh look, I can do that...and I can just copy-paste this line to do it! Cool!

Fritz, :digraphs does exactly that, it's just not properly explained in Working with Unicode (yet), this tip also looks a bit messy, so I (re)added {{review}}, I also added {{todo}} for :digraphs.
I will improve this tip at a later time.

Hmm...I guess it does. Does it also display characters that have no digraph defined, though? Are there such characters? I've never actually used digraphs before (though I may in the future...they look pretty cool) so I'm a little clueless as to how they work. --Fritzophrenic 14:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

No, it doesn't, read my comments on the other similar tip above. -- Carpetsmoker (Talk) 20:42, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Carpetsmoker's delete says: "Basically this is just one slightly, but not particularly, useful command (:tab sp)".

Like tip 1347, it's easy to argue for the deletion of tip 1223, but people unfamiliar with Vim's tabs will find useful info here. What about merging 1223 to 1347 (and perhaps any other related tips, to make one tip on "Using tab pages" (some title that attempts to avoid confusion with the tab key). --JohnBeckett 05:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I think John is right and we need to merge this tip to some other tip...except that by "merge" I mean "take the one comment with useful information and put it into another tip". This tip simply re-creates the behavior of <C-W>T

I think we should merge the information about how to make sure your terminal can support this option before deleting the tip. This is, after all, in an integration category. We should provide all information needed for the integration.

I've had a closer look. It's true that I know very little about this topic, but my instinct tells me that all useful information relevant for current systems has been merged to VimTip1312. So my intention is to DELETE this tip. --JohnBeckett 12:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Following additions are somewhat controversial – JB intention is to KEEP.

Carpetsmoker's delete says: "This tip adds a grand total of one very basic keybind (:tabn and :tabp already mapped by default)".

I can't fault the logic, but I have a feeling that we should have a tip with exactly this title. The tip could be very short, just stating the basic facts. --JohnBeckett 05:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

We could twist and turn the original meaning of even the most useless tip in to something useful, but in general I would prefer to just delete the useless tip and create a new one (The same applies to 1233) ... I suppose this is just a personal preference...

I think I agree with John on this one. We should merge the comments in to make sure people know that gt and gT work just as well (and gt can even take the tab number to jump directly to a tab!). While in some cases, the original tip is so simplistic or misguided that it would be better to simply create a new one, I do not think this is one of those cases. There is some good info here. Granted, it's nothing spectacular, but I'm sure someone will find it useful.

The other thing to keep in mind in cases like this is that the original tip isn't the only thing in the tip's content - the comments count too! They can and should be merged into the original tip, sometimes even replacing most of the content, but I think we should avoid creating and deleting pages on a whim (and moving them for that matter).

I disagree. Although we should certainly mention the script in the tip, I am the kind of person who likes to do things on my own, to know exactly how something is happening, etc. Part of the Vim Tips Wiki is to show people ways to accomplish something, to spark their own creativity – 'teach a man to fish' as they say. We can't do that if we delete any tip that is better accomplished with a plugin!

A quick look suggests the tip is a bit dodgy. However, Fritzophrenic is correct: Just because a script offers a much better solution is no reason to delete a tip. The only question is whether the info in the tip has any merit. I want to leave that question for now and think about it later, say in three months. So, my intention is to KEEP. --JohnBeckett 12:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)